


Disaster Recovery

by juniper__tree



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Dirty Emails, Dirty Talk, F/M, Humor, Kinda, Love, The Tempest Crew Being Jerks, The level of unprofessionalism, far too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-04-07 12:12:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19084789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniper__tree/pseuds/juniper__tree
Summary: When Kandros and Ryder's private email exchange ends up in the wrong hands, everyone is embarrassed.





	1. The message

**Author's Note:**

> Having some fun torturing Ryder & Kandros (my loves), and also doing a little head-hopping and generally being a goof.
> 
> Warning: mention of reproduction & reproductive issues near the end. Just a head's up. <3

The message went astray somehow.  The cause must have been an errant keystroke, or a clumsy jerk of the hand—the careless, one-handed typing of someone, flustered and hot, with more indulgent things on their mind than precise data entry.  

Someone who was distracted, imagining the quickened pulse and hard swallows of the person meant to read their words.  Imagining how quickly that person would close the email if they were in public, lest prying eyes happen to see. The things they might do when they read it again, in private.  

Someone who was too distracted to see they'd accidentally put an extra name in the "Send to:" field.  


	2. The crew

Cora rubbed her bleary eyes and tapped the datapad awake.  Her morning messages scrolled up the thin blue screen.

The coffee on her desk did not send graceful spirals of steam into the air to entice her, or transmit any  _It's time to wake up!_ signals to her brain.  Instead it sat there, flat and heavy—hot, but not very excited about it.  That made two of them. She drank it anyway.

It was bad.  They would have to find something new in Heleus.  A native substitute. There  _had_ to be one.  This Milky Way coffee was over 600 years old, and tasted like it.  

Yawning, Cora swiped her finger across the screen in a sluggish rhythm, trashing a dozen useless messages.  There were copies of copies of intel reports from every corner of the cluster, useless ads from Nexus merchants, and more insidious emails from Kadara black market traders.  

These were not-so-carefully disguised as personal notes, to trick a sleepy, or distracted, brain into reading.   _The family holos you ordered are in!_ or  _You'll never believe how good this synth suit looks on me..._ They weren't usually pornographic—the Initiative's system filters were surprisingly good at blocking those—but they were illegal, and annoying.  

Like this one, at the bottom of her list.  _Re: Last shore leave._ "Oh, please," she muttered at the screen, rolling her eyes.  These days, Cora's shore leave activities consisted mainly of waiting for shore leave to be over, so she could get back to work.   

But the trick still worked, because her eyes drifted down toward the body of the message.  Then her eyes widened.  _Now_ she was awake.  

_Every time I leave you, I can't stop thinking about the last time I touched you.  The last time my hands found their way under your armor. I hate your armor. I never want to see it again.  That's an order. I only want to see you, naked, beneath me._

"What the—"  Cora could see her disgusted expression reflected in the glossy screen of the datapad.  These ads were getting... creative. What were they trying to sell, some awful serial, like the ones Dr. T'Perro kept leaving in the bathroom?

_Do you think about my hands spreading your thighs?  How it feels when I lick my tongue up your—_

That was enough.  Cora huffed an angry sigh and scraped her chair against the floor as she stood up.  

In the research room, an equally sleepy bunch of crewmembers bent over their screens, making notes or checking their own morning emails.  Vetra yawned, and her mandibles wiggled. That set off a chain of yawns from Liam, whose loud groan echoed off the metal wall, to Suvi, who squeaked and shook her head, her choppy red hair fluttering.

Drack never seemed to yawn.  He said that when you were as old as he was, you were never  _not_ tired.  No one believed him, based on the available evidence.

Cora stomped out of the bio lab and up to the round console in the middle of the room, holding her datapad up in one hand.  "So is everybody else getting really filthy ads break through the email filter, or am I the lucky one?"

"Let me see," Liam mumbled, turning to take the pad from her.  After a quick scan, he snorted a short laugh. Then his shoulders shook while he repressed a fit of giggles.  Soon, he couldn't help himself, and laughed wildly. "Wow," he said, his free hand scratching his brow. "That's... really something."

Peebee, who seemed to have extra-sensory perception for anything indecent, ran into the room and up to Liam.  "Ooh, let me see, too." She grabbed at the pad.

Liam held his hand, and the pad, straight up above his head and out of her reach.  He calmly sipped his morning tea with a smug smile, while Peebee jumped around him, trying to take it.  He was taller than her, and his arms were considerably longer. She grunted, frustrated, and then a devious look flashed in her eyes.  Her hands, fingers clawed, moved to his ribs, tickling mercilessly.

He yelped and backed away, spilling tea onto the floor.  "Just listen, ok?” He cleared his throat and put on a sultry voice.  

_“Tell me what to do.  Tell me where to put my fingers, how hard to grip.  Tell me to go fast or slow. Tell me you need me, because I need you, everywhere."_

Everyone laughed but Cora, who folded her arms tight against her chest and looked at the floor, and Jaal, who did the same.  There was a reason they got along so well.

With Suvi and Peebee looking over his shoulder, Liam scrolled through the email, which was one of a chain of dozens.  "It just goes  _on and on,_ " he said.

Suvi squinted at the pad.  “It doesn't look like an ad to me."  

"Oh, shit."  Liam pointed to the expanded data of the email thread.  "This was supposed to go to  _Sara_ ," he told Cora.  "Somehow you got tagged on this.  I'm going to assume that was an accident."  

"Good assumption," Cora said sharply.  Liam didn't feel he deserved such a sarcastic tone, but he was, sadly, used to it.

"So the question is, who sent this to Sara?"  He thought, for a moment, it could be a crazed stalker.  As the Pathfinder, Sara Ryder suffered near-constant exposure to, and messages from, strangers throughout the cluster, especially after she led the attack on the Archon.  It wasn't hard to imagine some nutter would get a strange idea in his head, and send her email after email of the worst dirty talk he'd ever read.

Not that he'd read a huge amount.

Peebee tapped on the pad in his hands excitedly.  "Uh, you're reading it backward, genius. This is a conversation.  The last one is  _from_ Sara."

Suvi gasped.  "Ryder!" she said, with glee.  They all looked at each other in stunned, but mostly amused, silence.  

Except Cora.  "You know what?"  She held up her hands in a grim surrender.  "I don't want to know anymore." She shook her head and walked back to the lab.

"Who's she writing to?" Suvi asked.  

"Who do you think?" Drack answered with a grunt.

Vetra and Peebee gave each other a knowing look and answered in unison.

"Kandros."

"I mean, who's surprised?" Vetra asked.  "She was more into the Turian flexing in  _Last of the Legion_ than I was."

They continued to scan the thread for more choice quotes to read aloud, now in ridiculous approximations of Kandros and Sara's voices.  Everyone had to admit that Peebee did a pretty good Kandros.

_“Let me be clear: the next time I come to your quarters, I will dig my fingers under your clothes and pull them off you, slowly, piece by piece.  Then I’ll drag my talons softly across your naked body until you shiver.”_

She was appropriately boring with just a hint of apathy.  It made his words sound deeply unsexy.

Kallo padded up to the group, his steps soft but anxious.  "Suvi," he said, like an exasperated teacher at the end of the term, "we really should begin that trial run of the ODSY drive core overload procedures."  

Suvi, giggling and wiping tears from her eyes, didn't even turn to look at Kallo when she shushed him and waved him off.  

He looked around at just how many of the Tempest's crew were gathered here, and sidled up to the console.  "If something's going on," he whispered, " _of course_ I want to know about it."  There couldn't be gossip on the ship that he was unaware of... at least not for long.

Vetra gave him the rundown.  "Sara and Kandros from the militia office have been writing dirty emails to each other, and we're reading them out loud."

"Oh," he said.  He considered, briefly, whether this was interesting to him, decided it was not, and walked back to the bridge, leaving them to it.  

To Kallo, this was nothing compared to Gil's latest attempts at sabotaging the Tempest's perfectly calibrated systems, which he would discuss with Sara at the earliest opportunity.  She always seemed sympathetic. If she wanted to spend her free time with the Turian and send him...  _love notes_ , he supposed they were—well, it was not something he understood, but he hoped it made her happy.  

"This does explain a few things," Liam said to Vetra.  "Like why we never see her anymore when we dock at the Nexus.  Even if it's only a day, she's gone."

"If this is news to you, you haven't been paying attention,"  Vetra said. "Why do you think he comes aboard to debrief her every time?  In her quarters?"

" _Debrief_ is right," Peebee said with a wicked smile.  "I walked past the door once. On accident, of course.  I had no idea status meetings involved so much moaning."  She held a hand to her chest, as though she were honestly shocked.  "And grunts.  _So_ many grunts."  

Jaal had maintained his position, staring down at the floor, arms folded, though now there was the distinct air of a pout in his expression.  "I do not find this humorous," he said in a low, sad voice. "If Ryder has her own"—he sighed—" _romantic attachments,_ that is her business."    

Peebee elbowed Liam in the previously tickled ribs.   _"Jealous,"_ she whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear.  

A large, friendly hand patted Jaal on the back.  "Don't worry about it, kid," Drack told him. "She'll get tired of him eventually."    

Everyone else looked at Drack, and subtly shook their heads.  Drack shrugged. What did he know, anyway? He was only five million years old.  From what he'd seen—and he'd seen a lot—some stars burned out hard and fast. Unless there was something else to it, something like love, all the fucking in the galaxy wouldn't make it last.

If anyone thought this wouldn't end in the worst way, they were wrong.  It ended when Sara jogged into the room.

It wasn't a large ship, and she would have come past here on her running route eventually.  It just so happened she ran by while everyone (except Jaal) was still laughing.

She was all smiles, catching her breath and pulling down her headphones to hang around her neck.  "What's up? Having an all-hands without me?"

The laughing stopped.  To call what followed an awkward silence would be a sincere understatement.  

Everyone suddenly found themselves busy with... something far from the research room.  Everyone but Liam. If no one else would tell her, he would.  He could handle it.  Crisis management was his thing.  

"I think this is yours," he said softly, and handed the datapad to her.  "Bad routing on the email. Got mixed up."

When she realized what was on the pad, her face stiffened.  Her whole body stiffened. She did not look up.  All she could do was stuff the pad tightly under her arm, and take herself back to her quarters on legs which were suddenly very bad at walking.  

Everyone knew her secrets now.  Everyone knew about her relationship, the dreams and fantasies she could sometimes barely type, much less say aloud.  They were things she would never have shared with anyone, except Tiran.

Sara was not hurt, exactly, and not angry, exactly, though she was not  _not_ those things.  At heart, she was supremely, profoundly embarrassed.  The only cure for that, she knew from painful past experience, was time.  But a shower and a stiff drink, and some quality time with Benny the hamster, might help, too.  

Maybe a holo call to Tiran.  He would make her feel better.  He could also send a Strike Team to obliterate her entire crew.  He wouldn't, but he could. Perhaps they hadn’t considered that.             


	3. The check-up

One week later, Liam Kosta strolled past Nexus onboarding security and made his way to the tram terminal.  A few days' break for Tempest repairs meant he could not only get some overdue work done here, he could get some fresh, non-ship air.  He could go to the Vortex or anywhere really, but preferably the Vortex, and see some faces that were not the same ten faces he saw every day.  

For now, he was on an odd, but hopefully short, mission.  He was headed to the militia office, to see Kandros.

If Tiran Kandros had a temper, if he was the kind of guy who would get violent when slighted or embarrassed, he wanted to know about it now.  Sara was his friend, even if he had messed up and hurt her.  She didn't deserve what he—or any of them—had done, but she also didn't deserve some idiot with more fists than brains.    

Besides, if he was going to get decked, or worse, he'd be prepared for it.

Kandros stood in his permanent spot.  Militia officers buzzed from terminal to comm around him, but he didn't move.  There were probably dents worn into the floor from his feet.  His ever-present aide, Lt. Sajax, stood nearby, giving harsh orders to her omnitool in a soft, light voice.  

Liam could have sworn he saw a flinch from Kandros when he approached.  If it had been there, it vanished quickly.

"Kosta."  Kandros hardly looked at him, but Liam felt the quiver in his subvocals.  He wasn't especially angry, it seemed. More like embarrassed. Both of them knew what both of them knew.  But Kandros wasn't about to acknowledge it.

Timidity.  Not what Liam expected, but it was better than a three-knuckle sandwich.  

"Hey, Kandros," he said, keeping his voice high and friendly.  "Good to see you."

He didn't know if Turians could, physically, roll their eyes, but the withering look he received from Kandros was close enough.  

"Ryder come aboard with you?" Kandros asked, with calculated, and transparently false, disinterest.  

"You don't know?" Liam teased. 

Kandros didn't answer, but he shifted uncomfortably, without moving from his spot.  

"I believe she's still on-ship," Liam said.  "You could email her."  He smiled at Kandros, a bigger and more obnoxious smile than he'd given anyone in a long time.  

He wanted to test him, yes, but it was also entertaining.  If anyone knew Liam Kosta could be an ass sometimes—well, first in line would have been his mum, but close second was Liam himself.     

Kandros didn't punch him, or curse.  Not even a subharmonic growl.  The biggest reaction Liam could see was that his small round pupils narrowed just a bit further, and his mandibles twitched once.  Then he pushed past Liam without a word.

That must be Kandros at Level: Pissed Off.  Not bad.  As long as it didn't all explode out of him later in an uncontrollable rage, Liam guessed he was probably an all right sort of guy.  He passed the test.  For now.

“Touchy.”  Sajax sighed and shook her head.   “But he’s been that way lately.”

“Oh, I deserved worse,” he said.  “We found a bunch of… intimate correspondence between the chief and the Pathfinder.”  

Sajax groaned.  “Gross.”

“She must have told him we found it.  I feel bad. A little, anyway,” he said with a sheepish grin.  

“Only a little?”  Sajax laughed, and her laugh was softer and higher-pitched than he might have guessed.  It was lovely.  “I may not want to know the  _details_ , but I’m not sure why they thought it was a secret.  In the early days, every time she came by, we had to mop up the drool.”

“Hers or his?” he asked.

“Both.  I hope it didn’t take them long to figure it out.  If it did, they’re both clueless.”

Liam laughed, recalling all the times Sara, in the middle of a firefight or exploring a vault, would turn to him and say,  _I really have no idea what I’m doing, you know?  Never. Not a clue._  

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he said with a smile.  “Sounds like they’re made for each other.  We should all be so lucky.”

“Aw,” Sajax said, her subvocals humming.  “That’s really sweet.”

He leaned in closer.  “I can be, sometimes.”  

She looked him over, and it seemed to him like a positive appraisal.  “So you’re the one who pissed him off, and made my life hell for the past week?”  

“Is he  _that_ bad?”  Maybe his test method was all wrong, and Kandros wouldn’t show his true colors around Liam, if it would get back to Sara.    

“Nah,” she said with a wave of her hand.  “You saw him.  Grumpy and miserable.  Nothing I can’t handle.”  

“Grumpy is still a pain in the arse.  Let me make it up to you?”

“And how do you propose to do that?”  

He pretended to think it over, as though it had not been in his mind the moment he stepped into the office.  “Buy you a drink at the Vortex later?”

“That’s a start.”  Her purple markings crinkled in a kind of smile.  “I’ll be there at 2100.”

“Roger that,” he said, walking backwards out of the office.  “Looking forward to it.”

2100\.  After he finished up a few errands, he’d have just enough time to swing by the ship, and change into something a little nicer for her.  


	4. The requisition

We, the undersigned crew of the Andromeda Initiative Survey Ship Tempest and others, while in support of the freedom of both Pathfinder Sara Ryder and Nexus Militia Chief Tiran Kandros to pursue a life in their off-duty time, are nevertheless distressed by the lack of opportunity and means for these individuals to keep their private discussions  _just that_.  

We ask that the AI Communications Steering Committee extend the budget for holovideo conferencing to include two room-to-room comm devices for the aforementioned personnel.  The benefit of this outlay would well exceed the cost of not only the devices themselves, but the mental cost to the undersigned from hearing, or seeing, anything of a  _personal_ nature between our respective leaders.       

Cora Harper  
Liam Kosta  
Pelessaria B’Sayle  
Nakmor Drack  
Jaal Ama Darav Not Of The Tempest Crew Permanently But For Now  
Gilbert Brodie  
Dr. Lexi T’Perro  
Vetra Nyx  
Dr. Suvi Anwar  
 ~~Kallo Jath~~    _Suvi, I did not sign this._     
Lt. Popitina Sajax, Nexus Militia


	5. The talk

Kallo found her in the galley, alone, drinking coffee.  Sara had been so quiet on the ship lately.  That whole email thing really made her clam up, as they say.  

Clams.  He wondered if there were any clams on Aya.

He pulled a tall glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the filter tank.  It was time for his daily algae juice, which he had every afternoon at roughly the same time, in the typically empty galley.  Except today, it wasn’t empty.

“Do you mind if I sit with you, Sara?”  

She gestured to the empty space on the bench seat beside her.  “Be my guest.”

He spooned in the dried algae powder and it bloomed in his glass.  Reconstituted, never his favorite, but working on ships for years allowed him grow accustomed to it.  At least back home, there was always the opportunity for fresh.

Here?  Only powder, not even tank bred.  Unless…

Clams on Aya.  If there were clams, there could be algae.  Natural algae.  He filed the idea away to ask Jaal about later.  

He took the seat next to Sara and set his glass on the table.  She stared down into her coffee, her hands wrapped around the cup.  Her face was blank, which was unlike her.

Perhaps some conversation would cheer her up.  He always enjoyed their chats on the bridge.

“So,” he began, “seen anything fun off-ship lately?  I never seem to disembark these days,” he said with a laugh.

She thought for a moment.  “Well... last week on Voeld I counted twelve frozen, snapped-off toes in the snow.  Most of them were Angaran. Their toes are long. That’s how you can tell.” She sipped her coffee and grimaced.  

So much for small talk.  He gulped down half his algae juice and glanced anxiously toward the door.  

“This is bad,” Sara said.  She sounded so dejected.

“Are you all right?” he asked.  

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said.  “I just meant the coffee.”

The problem was, she didn’t sound fine, and he wasn’t sure what he could do about it.  

That wasn’t true.  There was one thing he could do, one uncomfortable thing, but he had a feeling it was the right thing.  

“Sara,” he said, “I’m sorry your private emails were read by everyone and I’m sorry everyone laughed at them.”

She turned to look at him, to  _really_ look at him, he thought, for the first time since he entered the galley.  “Uh… thanks,” she said, a slightly bewildered smile on her face. “But I didn’t think you were in on it.”  

“No, not me.”  He found himself looking deeply into his own drink.  “I didn’t find it very interesting. We—Salarians, I mean—don’t have those kinds of relationships.  It’s really only about procreation for us.”

What he wanted to say is that he found everyone else’s preoccupation with sex to be dull in the extreme.  Unfortunately, most species took offense at that notion. For them, it seemed, mating was the center of their universe.  To him, it was a family duty, and only as exciting as that sounded, which was not at all.

She nodded in acknowledgement.  “Are you… looking for someone to procreate with from the Paarchero?  Or on the Nexus?” she asked with a small smile.

Sara meant well, he knew, but she could only see such things through her own lens, her own cultural experience.  It was not a fun process, or a love match.  In fact, family negotiations were very fractured here in Andromeda, because there were so few intact families.    

“No, not yet.  I suppose I will look for someone to make a procreation bond with soon,” he said.  “It would make my parents happy, if they knew.”

“It probably is weird to you,” she said, her brow furrowed.  “I mean, I can’t… um,  _procreate_ with Tiran, but that’s not what it’s about for me.”  

“Not weird,” Kallo answered, and he meant it.  “Just different.”

“I’m not ruling out procreating with someone else,” she said, almost to herself, as if she’d never thought this through before.  “Although with everything I’ve been through, I’m not even sure I physically  _can—_ ”

A pained look came over her face, and she held her hand in the air.  She always did this when the AI in her brain interrupted her.

“Thank you, SAM, but I truly do not want a real-time update on my reproductive system.  Don’t need to know how many eggs I have. Let’s keep it a mystery, ok?”

She sighed and sipped her coffee, though she seemed to instantly regret it.  

He couldn’t help but ask.  “Humans have eggs?”

Sara held her eyes shut tight.  “Yeah, we have eggs. The point is that for me, there’s a lot more to it than all that.  And—”  She laughed, and looked surprised by it.  “It’s not about what was in those emails, you know?  I care about Tiran. He cares about me. I—”

She looked up at the ceiling. “I love him, I guess.”  Then she laughed more.  

Kallo had never been more grateful to be spared this overly complex and difficult cultural ritual.  Love was simple—immediate family, close friends, those who were good to you.  Whatever Sara was experiencing looked painful and… confusing.  He hoped it was worth it.

“And, honestly,” she continued, “kids or not or whatever, my legacy is set.  I’ve made a difference.”

Now here was something that made sense to him.  Something that had only been a fleeting idea to him at first, but had settled in his mind more recently.  

“Actually, I do understand,” he said.  “I don’t feel the same pressure I might have back home to continue my family’s line.  Despite how few of us there are here,” he said, an acknowledgement that made him feel guilty.  But he could not change his response to that.

There was so much he had done to be proud of.  He had helped build the Tempest and come with her on this long voyage, to see what he had built come to life.  He had helped Sara and the others defeat a terrible threat, and saved so many lives.  He had made friends, and seen new worlds.  

“I will still try to make a bond but… I feel much the same as you, Sara,” he said.  “I have made a mark here.  And that’s important.”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile.  “Exactly.  Cheers to that.”

She held her coffee cup in the air.  He held up his algae juice.  He didn’t think he’d ever been in a “cheers” situation before.  He was not sure who was supposed to initiate the clinking, or if it was a simultaneous clink.

Sara clinked for him, ever the leader.  


	6. The messages (encrypted)

>> ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATION RECEIVED

>> CONFIRM PATHFINDER COMM ID - ***.****.***

>> AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED>> RUNNING DECRYPTION…

**APEX mission on Eos - your report**

Pathfinder,

Spirits know you’re busy, but can I get a little more detail on this Eos report?  I appreciate brevity—in official comms, anyway—but “your guys took care of it” isn’t going to cut it.  And “my guys” aren’t being very forthcoming.

What happened down there?  Something I should know about?    

Kandros

PS - I’m sending  _all_ of my messages to you encrypted from now on.  Just in case.

____

>> ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATION RECEIVED

>> CONFIRM NEXUS MILITIA COMM ID - ****.***.**

>> AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED>> RUNNING DECRYPTION…

**Re: APEX mission on Eos - your report**

Tiran,

Nothing happened, really.  It was a very boring mission.  They walked in, did the job, and walked out.  The only details I left out are personally embarrassing to me and don’t need to be in your status files.  I don’t even want them in an email. For obvious reasons. Your team is doing me a favor.

You know, if you want to teach me the proper way to write a mission debrief, you’ll have to give me a hands-on lesson.  Of course, I only have time late at night…

Sara

____

>> ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATION RECEIVED

>> CONFIRM PATHFINDER COMM ID - ****.***.**

>> AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED>> RUNNING DECRYPTION…

**RE:  Re: APEX mission on Eos - your report**

Honey,

I know how to get you to talk.  You say all kinds of things in my bed… I’ll find out sooner or later.  

Make it sooner. You know I can’t stop thinking about you whispering in my ear, your breath against my hide…

Can you do a holocall tonight?  I’m off duty at 1800 Nexus time.  

____

>> ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATION RECEIVED

>> CONFIRM NEXUS MILITIA COMM ID - ****.***.**

>> AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED>> RUNNING DECRYPTION…

**Yes**

Need to clear the meeting room. I’ll just tell them the pyjak peed in there again. Worked last time.


End file.
